Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method of the image forming apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus which can perform printing on various recording media is needed in a print market. There are various types of recording media, such as commonly-used paper referred to as plain paper, coated paper having a coated surface, glossy paper, punched paper on which punched holes are preliminarily provided, and index paper having a tab portion. In this situation, printing on a transparent recording medium is also demanded. The transparent recording medium may be used as a transparency to be projected by an overhead projector and as a cover sheet of a booklet like a catalogue and a pamphlet. The needs to use these transparent recording media as a part of a print product are expected to further increase in the future.
With respect to such growing needs, a print mode to a transparent recording medium in the current situation is most likely a mode to use the recording medium alone as a transparency.
When a conventional image forming apparatus performs printing on transparencies as a recording medium, if a conveyance path for reversing a sheet after printing in the apparatus and a double-sided conveyance path are provided therein, the apparatus performs control to limit conveyance to those conveyance paths from an aspect of a conveyance performance of a recording medium. Thus, when printing is performed on a transparent recording medium, the recording medium subjected to printing is only discharged outside of the image forming apparatus without being reversed.
Therefore, in the case of the image forming apparatus which forms an image from above to a conveyed recording medium, when printing is performed on a transparent recording medium, the recording medium is always discharged face up since the apparatus can only discharge the recording medium after printing as it is outside of the apparatus. When a document to be printed on a transparent recording medium includes a plurality of pages, pages are printed face up in order from a first page. Thus, if the document is printed as it is, an order of pages in an output product are reversed.
In order to solve this issue, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-243486 discusses a technique for forming an image of a print document data as a mirror image when printing is performed on a transparent recording medium. Printing is performed by facing up on a print side, and a printed image is a mirror image, so that a user will see the print side through the output recording medium. Thus, an output product seems like a resultant product which is output face down and includes pages in the correct order for the user.
However, the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-243486 is not sufficient for handling of various output products using transparent recording media. For example, the relevant technique cannot handle a case when a resultant product is created using transparent films on a front cover and a back cover. When a user intends to print images on a front cover and on a back cover, it would generally be thought that the user intends to print an image of the front cover on a front side and an image of the back cover on a back side. When a face-down output is assumed, according to the control discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-243486, an image appearing on the front side of the front cover is actually a mirror image printed on the back side, and thus it seems that a correct image is printed on the front side of the front cover when the recording medium is seen through from a face-down side. Similarly, a mirror image is printed on the back side of the back cover, it seems that a correct image is printed when the recording medium is seen from the front side of the back cover.
The output product that the user originally intends to is the one in which a normal image (defined as an antonym of a mirror image) can be seen from the back side of the back cover as a face-up side, however, such an output product cannot be obtained by the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-243486.
The advancement in the conveyance technique of recording media in the recent image forming apparatuses enables transparent recording media to be conveyed through a conveyance path for reversing the medium after printing in the apparatus and a double-sided conveyance path. Along with the advancement of the conveyance technique, provision of an image forming apparatus which can handle various output products using transparent recording media is demanded.